Write to them. They’ll probably be gladder to hear from you than you expect. Two pieces of research explain why, and why sending that message still feels so hard.
People are gladder to hear from you than you think
A team led by Peggy Liu at the University of Pittsburgh ran a set of experiments with more than 5,900 people, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In one, half the people remembered a time they got in touch with someone “just because”, after a long time without talking. The other half remembered a time someone did that to them. People who remembered sending the message thought it was less appreciated than people who remembered getting one.
In other experiments, people really sent a short note, or a note with a small gift, to someone they hadn’t been in touch with for a while. The senders guessed how much it would be appreciated. Then the people who got it said how they felt. The senders kept guessing too low.
The gap grew when the message was a surprise and when the two people weren’t close. The people receiving it paid more attention to the surprise than the senders did, and the more surprised they were, the more they appreciated it. So the long silence you’re nervous about is part of what makes the message nice to get.
Why it still feels so hard
In 2024, Lara Aknin at Simon Fraser University and Gillian Sandstrom at the University of Sussex published seven studies on why people don’t send the message.
In the first, 90.9% of the 441 university students they asked in Canada had lost touch with a friend they still cared about. Few of them were keen to do anything about it. The strongest reason was a worry that the friend wouldn’t want to hear from them. Next came the feeling that it would be awkward after so long.
Then the researchers made it as easy as they could. They picked people who wanted to reconnect, thought the friend would appreciate it and had a way to contact them, and gave them time to write. In one study, 27.8% sent the message. In another, 36.8% did.
People were also just as willing to talk to a stranger as to message an old friend. After enough time, an old friend can start to feel like a stranger.
They may be waiting for you too
At Ciao! we sometimes say “They miss you too.” No study can promise that about one particular friend, but there is evidence for something close to it.
In Aknin and Sandstrom’s second study, people were much more interested in hearing from a friend they’d lost touch with than in being the one to write: 4.9 against 3.5, on a scale from 1 to 7. If most people would rather the other person went first, your old friend may be sitting on the same message you are.
Peggy Liu has said she uses this herself. When she hesitates, she reminds herself that “other people may also want to reach out to me and hesitate for the same reasons.”
What helped people send it
In Aknin and Sandstrom’s last study, 194 people on a university campus in the UK who had lost touch with a friend were split into two groups. One group spent three minutes sending messages to current friends, about three people each. The other spent three minutes scrolling social media. Then everyone was encouraged to write to their old friend. In the group that had warmed up, 53% sent the message. In the scrolling group, 31% did.
Two things you can take from this:
- Warm up. Send a couple of easy messages to people you talk to all the time, then write the one you’ve been putting off.
- Use a birthday. In the first study, a friend’s birthday was the reason people rated highest for getting back in touch.
What to write
Keep it short. “I was thinking about you, how are you?” is enough. Skip the long apology for the silence. From what these studies found, they’ll mostly be pleased you wrote. Our post on how to reconnect with an old friend has more examples.
Questions
Is it weird to text an old friend out of the blue?
Usually not. In Liu’s experiments, the more surprising the message, the more it was appreciated, and the more the senders underestimated it.
Should I reach out to an old friend after years?
If you lost touch because life moved on, yes. Both studies looked at friendships like that. Neither looked at friendships that ended in a fight, so if something went wrong between you, that’s a different decision.
Is it weird to text an old friend happy birthday?
No. In Aknin and Sandstrom’s first study, it was the reason people rated highest for getting back in touch.
Sources
Liu, P. J., Rim, S., Min, L., & Min, K. E. (2023). The surprise of reaching out: Appreciated more than we think. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(4), 754-771. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000402 (published online July 2022). Summary and the Liu quote: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220711095206.htm
Aknin, L. B., & Sandstrom, G. M. (2024). People are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends. Communications Psychology, 2, 34. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00075-8 Open access: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11332216/
Where Ciao! fits
Ciao! is an iPhone app that tells you who you haven’t talked to in a while, counting from the last time you did. You choose how often you’d like to hear from each person. When it’s been a while, you get a note that evening, and on a friend’s birthday there’s a note in the morning. Ciao! never writes for you: one tap opens WhatsApp, Messages or a call, and the words are yours. There’s no account to make, and the Yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial.
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